Dewey's Nine Lives

But Ninja was so sleek and beautiful. And her daughter and husband were so adamant. And every time she went back to the shelter, which she never should have done but just couldn’t help it, it became more and more clear to Barbara that poor Ninja was never going to get adopted. Not in that isolation cell that made him seem like the worst inmate in the prison, and not with that sign on his cage. “He wasn’t a Mr. Cuddle, purr-like-a-freight-train cat,” Barbara recalled, “but he deserved a home. Every animal deserves a home. It was sad that no one had a place in their lives for him.” Barbara cared about saving animals, and here was a cat that obviously needed saving. He needed a good, loving, pet-free (obviously) home, and that is exactly what she could provide. She couldn’t turn away. Her whole life, largely thanks to her mother, Barbara Lajiness had never turned away from a creature in need.

“Why do you call him Ninja?” Barbara asked the volunteer as she was filling out the final paperwork and paying for his adoption.

“Don’t worry,” the volunteer replied with a smile. “You’ll see.”

Barbara’s parents divorced in 1976. She was eight years old, and even at that young age, she knew it was coming. Her parents hadn’t been getting along for years, and life at home had been uncomfortable and tense as two people who had gone separate ways struggled to make it work. Her mother was focused on the family. Her father wanted to have fun: to go drinking, to stay out late without the kids, to travel. When he came home, he was angry and frustrated with his life. Barbara had two teenage brothers, and they didn’t appreciate either his absence or his anger. For a while, everyone yelled. Then nobody talked. Barbara’s outlet, even at that young age, was the family cat, Samantha. That’s good, the little girl thought when her brothers told her their father had moved out for good. Now it might be calm in the house. What a sad, sad thought for an eight-year-old child.

But she soon found out that life without her father was far worse than she had expected, at least financially. Almost instantly, the family plummeted from a comfortable, middle-class existence to the poverty line. Her father had a steady job working for Michigan Bell, the local telephone company. Before they were married, her mother had worked for Michigan Bell, too, as a telephone operator. She gave up her job to raise her children. Eighteen years later, she discovered that even in good times, jobs for middle-aged women with skimpy résumés were scarce. In 1976, in the hardscrabble communities around Flint, Michigan, they were nonexistent. There was barely enough work for the men who had once been employed by General Motors but were losing their jobs as the company took their factories overseas. The only job Evelyn Lambert could find to support her children was at a nursing home, cooking breakfast for the residents. Her shift started at 3:00 A.M. She was paid minimum wage.

It wasn’t considered acceptable work for a mother. In 1976, in the small town of Fenton, Michigan, the commuter town outside Flint where the Lamberts lived, no work was considered acceptable for a mother. In Fenton, women didn’t get divorced; they didn’t work outside the home; they didn’t leave their children alone for long stretches of time. Nobody wanted even to acknowledge what had happened to Evelyn Lambert. It was too real somehow, and who knows, it might be contagious. Some of the neighbors openly pitied her, something Barbara’s mother could never stand. Others shunned her. Barbara found herself mocked at elementary school, where everyone seemed to know everything about her mom. Her friends were no longer allowed to come over and play, since there was no one to watch them. In only a few months, Barbara realized, her social status had fallen apart as quickly as the family finances. It didn’t help that her father had moved to Grand Blanc, a nearby suburb of Flint, and was spending his time and money on a woman more interested in living the way he wanted to live.